This week marks one year since the sudden and inglorious closure of the Star Store building, which housed several studios and shared workspaces for many students in UMD’s College of Visual and Performing Arts. It also meant the closure of the University Art Gallery, arguably the finest in the city at the time, as well as its satellite exhibition spaces, Gallery 244 and Crapo Gallery.

Without polite warning from CVPA Dean Lawrence Jenkins or Chancellor Mark Fuller, students, faculty, and community were blindsided by the sudden announcement. Gallery Director Viera Levitt first heard the news while she was vacationing in Europe, and I called her to ask what was going on. She was stunned.

The students, many of whom came to CVPA from across the country and the world, were lured by the promise of well-equipped studios, wonderful exhibition opportunities, and the intriguing lure of interdisciplinary cross-pollination with fellow students, among other things. No one felt any better when news came that a vacant Bed Bath & Beyond in a North Dartmouth strip mall was to be converted into a studio, a fiasco in itself.

It was like a mean father saying, “You should just be happy you’re getting this at all!”

The weeks that followed saw demonstrations by students and many allies at the corner of Union and Purchase streets and on the Dartmouth campus, letters to the administration and officials as high as Governor Maura Healy (who seemed somewhat dismissive of the whole situation), righteous interventions by Mayor Jon Mitchell, State Senator Mark C. Montigny and others (all to no avail), and much press coverage. Nothing changed. The ship had sailed. And sunk.

But then something came up. Last December, a few determined MFA students formed the Star Store Collective. They included the unusual and outspoken student leader Fallon Navarro (who came from Phoenix to work at the Star Store) and Anis Beigzadeh (who came from Kerman, Iran, to do the same). They installed “Works in Ceramics: A Student Exhibition” in a vacant storefront on the northwest corner of Acushnet Avenue and William Street, with more exhibitions planned.

With the help of some private donors who paid the rent, the Star Gallery was created. The benefactors agreed to help until May. We are now in the middle of August.

Maybe it’s because of the history and good vibe of the art scene in this space. In previous years it was the Navio Artisans Collective, led by ceramicists Charlie Barmonde and Seth Rainville. It later became Gallery 65 on William, an artist collective led by Nicole St. Pierre.

The Star Gallery is currently hosting an exhibition called “Beyond the Star Store: More Than Just A Building,” and the name of the exhibition is apt. It was never just about the building.

It was about camaraderie and constructive criticism, it was about solidarity and the support system and the culture and the community and the caring. It was about romanticizing the past, honoring the present and preparing for the future.

Almost all of the exhibitors are CVPA graduates who worked in the Star Store building. Three are former faculty members, including painting professor Severin “Sig” Haines, ceramics professor Chris Gustin and printmaking instructor Marc St. Pierre.

There is a slight melancholy in the gallery as Haines died in June 2023 and St. Pierre in December 2019. They both spent a lot of time in the Star Store building and the space that became the Star Gallery. Both were my teachers and good friends of mine. Their voices and presence are still in my mind.

There is a beautiful, untitled painting by Alex Landry of a red-bearded man lying in the grass with his hand over his heart and his eyes closed. Landry took her own life in April 2023 at the age of 29 during the last weeks of her studies. Her spirit also lives on.

Haines is represented by two lovely little paintings, stacked on top of each other, in his well-known style. Above is “West Island” in subtle greys and blues; below is “Barney’s Joy,” a deceptively simple and beautiful landscape.

He often said that he painted landscapes in the service of painting, not pictures in the service of the landscape. But I pointed it out to him: he often endured summer heat, late autumn cold, swarms of mosquitoes and wet shoes in the service of the landscape. He smiled in silent recognition.

St. Pierre’s photoetching “Il Giardino della Minerva” (Minerva’s Garden) shows about a dozen glowing goldfish in a fountain in Salerno, with the distorted reflection of a building lending an air of mystery to the composition. His wife Nicole is exhibiting “Harborside, Maine,” a small bucolic pastel landscape.

Emily Moreau’s “Grandpa’s Kitchen” shows her bespectacled grandfather with his arms crossed and a bottle of Bud on the table in front of him. The acrylic painting is full of small details – utensils next to the stove, a red box of crackers, and a tiny picture of a pig on the wall. Moreau does something very interesting with her painting by flattening the space throughout, bringing everything to nearly the same visual depth.

“Drummers” by Kat Knutsen is a love letter to the local creative community and to downtown New Bedford itself. Two men stand on the William Street side of No Problemo, casting a lavender shadow on the sidewalk.

The man on the left is Johnny Neiman, who is the regular drummer for Pumpkin Head Ted and the occasional drummer for Jimi Goo, sitting on his beloved bicycle. On the right, on his skateboard, is Ryan Burke, drummer for Long Swan and Sonic Anomalies. Between the two is a snare drum.

Alison Borges shows two paintings that are majestic in both their scale and subject matter. One shows a seated man with nothing but a white cloth draped around his waist. With his long black hair and a staff in his hand, he looks like an ancient god. The accompanying painting, titled “The Visceral Force of Life,” shows a statuesque woman in white, one hand on her hip, the other pointing a finger downward to the mortal world. She could be Aphrodite or Hera or another Olympian goddess.

A mythological figure of a different sort is hidden in a corner of the gallery. A life-sized three-dimensional figure wearing a mask of glowing blue lightbulbs and a dress decorated with stars and celestial bodies raises her hand and offers a strange flower. Entitled “Skywoman Waits…”, she is the alter ego of artist Kate Frazer Rego. She is part Wonder Woman, part Mother Nature, and part Inca priestess.

A few metres away is ‘I Love Lamp’ by Amanda Watkins. The lamp is partly inspired by Art Nouveau with its tassels and ornate beads, but also has an element of 1950s science fiction, as parts of the lampshade are decorated with images of wide-eyed aliens, flying saucers and the planet Saturn.

Master printmaker Kim Gatesman is a kind of alchemist, effortlessly moving between art and science and finding common ground. Her paintings seem to exist in an underworld. She shows two electrostatic monotypes, including “As If in a Dream.”

Two textile artists are featured. One is Ellery Ekleberry, who presents “A Spot to Rest,” an amorphous form in pink, lavender, orange and yellow from which two tiny pillow-like shapes emerge. Azin Majooni’s “Revival,” made of handmade paper, flax, kozo and denim, expresses her deep concern for the environment and political violence with its earth tones and a sea of ​​blues.

Navarro and Gustin each exhibit ceramic works that are outside the functional and more rooted in the contemplative.

Navarro’s red clay painting, The Space Between Us Is Everywhere, references gates, bars, and boxes, and functions as none of these. It is about the ability to see through things, and at the same time about the fact that the view is blocked. It is composed with the flourishes of a calligrapher.

Gustin, who recently presented his work in the last exhibition at the Dedee Shattuck Gallery, is showing “Spirit Series, #2318,” a large-scale pneumatic sculpture that references the human form.

There are also ceramic works, including Jenny Peace’s contemplative “Tidal Moon,” Molly Frantz’s understated “Passage,” Ryder Gordon’s subversive “Decadent Waffle,” Sean Lutz’s pretty “Deconstructed Cup Study,” Jordan Blackenship’s elegant “Espresso Cup with Cork Saucer,” Christopher Smith’s architecturally influenced “Structured,” and Corrinn Jusell’s untitled sculptural wood-fired lightbulb vase.

“Beyond the Star Store: More Than Just a Building,” curated by Navarro and Beigzadeh, is on display at the Star Gallery, 65 William S., through August 22.

The gallery fills a special niche and is run by people who are truly immersed in the city’s evolving culture. The closure of the Star Store building by bureaucrats largely disconnected from the community they were supposed to serve was a tragedy and a farce.

But a phoenix can rise from the ashes. Perhaps the Star Gallery can hold on.

It was never just a building. It was about the souls that inhabited it.

Don Wilkinson has been writing art reviews, artist profiles, and cultural commentary on the South Coast for over a decade. His writing has been published in local newspapers and regional art magazines. He is a graduate of the Swain School of Design and the CVPA at UMass Dartmouth. You can reach him by email at [email protected]